Here’s why Taylor Parker’s mum didn’t expose her, and it’s not what she said in Maternal Instinct

In Netflix’s new true crime documentary Maternal Instinct, we find out why Taylor Parker’s mum stayed quiet about her daughter’s fake pregnancy, but the real reason is very different.

Throughout the documentary, Parker’s mum, Shonna Prior, appears to suggest she stayed quiet about her daughter’s fake pregnancy because she was worried about losing access to her grandchildren. It’s a pretty understandable fear.

At the time, Prior knew Parker couldn’t be pregnant because she had undergone a hysterectomy years earlier. Yet she never publicly exposed the lie, even as Taylor convinced friends, family and boyfriend Wade Griffin that she was expecting a baby.

But what Prior actually said during Taylor Parker’s trial is very different and a bit more complicated.

So, why did Taylor Parker’s mum not expose the lie?

via Texas Department of Criminal Justice

As reported by KTAL, when Prior testified in November 2022, she repeatedly said she believed the pregnancy lie would eventually fall apart on its own.

As she told the jury, “Not much you can do about a fake pregnancy. She knew she wasn’t pregnant. We knew she wasn’t pregnant. There was no need to come up with a plan. We figured the lie would be exposed. He would figure it out.”

Prior also explained why she never directly confronted Taylor about pretending to be pregnant. “Because she knew that I knew that I wasn’t going to be a grandma again.”

Later, when asked why she never simply told her daughter she wasn’t pregnant, Prior said, “I didn’t feel like there was a reason that I should say, ‘You’re not pregnant’ to her.”

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So, her position at trial was that everybody involved already knew the truth, and she expected the lie to unravel naturally.

But prosecutors pointed out a major contradiction

via Netflix

Prosecutor Kelley Crisp reminded Prior that she had given different testimony to a grand jury shortly after Taylor’s arrest in 2020. Crisp quoted Prior’s earlier statement, “If I would have confronted her in person, I feared that she would keep my grandkids from me.”

That’s actually much closer to the explanation viewers hear in Maternal Instinct. But when asked about it during the trial, Prior denied that fear was the reason she stayed silent. “I didn’t. I didn’t fear that she’d keep my grandkids from me.”

When prosecutors asked why she had previously said the opposite, Prior responded, “Maybe that’s what I thought you wanted me to say. Apparently, in November 2020, I felt differently.”

Even after being challenged about the inconsistency, Prior continued to insist that she thought the fake pregnancy couldn’t possibly last forever. She told jurors, “We figured the lie was going to be exposed. There were so many people who knew it was a lie and just kept on buying it. I’m not shifting the blame, I just figured he would figure it out.”

She also claimed that people around Wade Griffin already knew Taylor couldn’t be pregnant. “His mother was aware of it, his brother was aware of it. It’s like everyone around them was aware of it. We did not feel the need to call them up.”

Maternal Instincts is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.